Market Research - Existing Products

Little Big Planet is one game that I have played and researched. Little Big Planet was a PlayStation exclusive game that came out in October of 2008. This game was a huge success due to its originality and creativity. It held one of the simplest types of game being a platform puzzle game but it revolutionised its genre. The 2 layered platform game had the largest target audiences of… Everyone. They textured the game with bright vibrant colours, soft aesthetic sack people.

This meant that the game would appeal to a younger age group as it looked good, had fairly simple controls and a happy fun atmosphere. The game developers made it so that all you realistically do it jump, run, grab to push and pull and swing. However, because the genre is a puzzle platform game it meant that the game developers could make the campaign start off easy for the younger audiences and fairly straight forward and then the game like usual gets harder. Additionally, there were secret/ side missions that allowed for a more challenging game play. You play as ‘sackboy’ who helps 8 ‘creator curators’ of LittleBigPlanet but one of them has gone rogue and turned evil this allows for a very broad array of levels and side missions that the developers have made to once again appeal to all ages. This is because it’s one thing completing a level and it’s another thing to collect all of the items or get the fastest time. There is also a narrator who follows you and acts as your mentor throughout. You can customise your sackboy making him unique to everyone else and this can be done by different clothing collectables and stickers that you find throughout the game. There is also a ‘pod’ which is your home screen which you can further customise making it your own and allows you to generate a personal character.

 

Outlast is a survival Horror game where you play a journalist who is recording a documentary and researching into a psychiatric hospital away from civilization. This game is aimed at an older target audience around 16-35. This is because it has scary moments and fairly twisted plot lines with homicidal people. You are Miles Upshur who cannot fight against the deranged people and so instead it’s like a big game of hide and seek adding to the fear of getting caught. Additionally, the character is enhanced as you have night vision on your camera but can only use this if you have enough batteries that you have to actually collect throughout. The developers don’t really tell you what you are getting yourself into and so you have to find out and discover on your own. They represent the journalist as weak and vulnerable with the ill people who have been test subjects as ‘monsters’. The representation of the ill is like this due to them being mutated and often bare clothed if any showing how they are not only deprived but also mentally not right and excluded from society, this can be seen in the illustration. 

The themes of the game are discovery, lust/ desire to un-turn the discovery of the hospital. You interact with the game through opening doors of your choice and implementing keys and such into places to unlock new areas. However, there is a set path that you have to take.


Mario Kart Wii is another video game and this is a racing game with Mario characters. You start off with a slim choice of characters and at a bronze tier. You then as you progress unlock different characters and so you can choose who you play as and also the level of difficulty increases making it harder and more challenging. Certain characters have specific storylines and some of the maps that you play on as you unlock them are linked to them and therefore tells you bits about the characters. Such as rainbow road linking to Mario showing he’s very bright happy and skilled. The only real emotional drive is jealousy as you want to be first and don’t like losing. You can’t really customise your character but you can choose how you drive and play the game whether or not you try to obstruct other characters or not is your choice. You can also play as your Mii character and so there is customisation in that sense.

Skyrim is a very unique free world game. You play as your chosen character and species each of which has different ability and weaknesses. The game allows you to choose your own missions and go about the game how you choose. You main aim is to keep your chosen colonies safe and fight off demons and dragons. You learn new things as you complete different quests and this allows you to defeat bigger and harder enemies. The game developers have allowed you to play the game how you want even if you just want to explore what the game has to offer environmentally. You take on various different enemies and people that you judge and the game is very stereotypical in the sense that females are usually very agile and the men are strong along with big beasts being slow whereas spiders and other things are fast and poisonous. You can practically decide your emotional theme whether you take on side quests and go on a more helpful route with sorrow and heroism or go personal in the fact that you do what needs to be done to better yourself. The game is practically fully explorable and you can loot, steal, rob, unlock doors, climb and fight to name a few things making it very interactive. 

Grand theft Auto San Andreas is one of my all time favourite games which was brought out in 2004. This shows that in order for a game to be good it has to have the best graphics or storyline as it didn't exactly excel or get recognition specifically for that but is still a great game. The game revolves around your character Carl Johnson or CJ for short who is part of the gang Grove Street who has rivals such as the Ballas. You do certain jobs relating to your friends or gang or for business that allows you to gain respect and territory. There is a story line that goes through the emotional theme of betrayal and loyalty as some of your gang members who you would die for turn out to be snakes and are allied with the Ballas. The game is an Action-Adventure game that has a free world open environment. This third person shooter essentially allows for you to carry out what you want in the imitated city of LA. You start the game just seeing CJ arrive at the airport after having left the city after his brothers death. Instantly he is met by a policeman who he has history with and then meets up with gang members, gets shot at until he gets home where we find out that his mum is also dead and so within the first hour of the game we make a connection and know a bit about CJ. The game developers have forced you to participate in the first couple of missions but after the introduction you are free to do what you want. However the more you complete in the game the more things you can do and more efficiently as well such as running, fighting can be improved and you can unlock things like the Gym. The game is heavily based around stereotypes of gangs and policeman as well as other characters such as females who are skinny with big assets and always wear revealing clothes and this relates to their target audience of around 13-20 year olds even though its rated a M and so maybe slightly older at young adult males due to its requirement of drugs, sex, violence and some disturbing scenes. The story allows you to interact with lots of things for example whether you allow your character to get fat by eating junk food, Fit by constantly running or muscular by hitting the gym is completely up to you. You can also choose your own modes of transport and weapons so it really depends on how you want to play the game

All of the above games I have also played my self and so I know them first hand meaning that I have an understanding of how each of their storyline is played out and what it withholds. This is important primary research as I am not relying on someone elses opinion or word rather my own. This also allows me to ensure that it is reliable as I have first hand experience and if need to I could look further into it and verify any quieries or developments such as within GTA they had a recent update that allowed players to experience it from a FP perspective.

Audience Research Questionaire

 Video Game Audience Research Questionnaire

This is a questionnaire relating to video games so that I can gain a better understanding of what the average gamer likes and enjoys. It will also allow me to decide on what type of a game I create and what I feel would be the most interesting and appealing.

Age : 

                                <12                 12-15             16-25            25+

Gender :

                    Male            Female          Other

      

Occupation :

                      Retail                 services                 Military                   Other

Aspirations :

               In the future I hope to be......  

Rich      The same as where I am today     With a family     In a secure Job    No Clue

What takes up the majority of your free time? :

          Social Media               spending time with friends              Family time                 TV

 

How much time do you spend on your phone a day? : 

                            Less than a hour                     1-3 hours                     4+ hours

What’s your favourite music genre? :

              Rock            Pop          R&B          Indie        Drum & Bass     Techno       Classical

 

On average, how often do you play video games? :

               Daily                   A few times a week               Once a week             Once a month or less

What was the last game you played? :

             Call of Duty     Halo       Horror Game     Battlefield      Dishonoured     Other

What is your favourite all time game and why? :

                        ...............................................................................................

What's your favourite part of a game? Eg - backstories / final fight / build up / introduction etc :

          Intro              Build up            Online           Cut scenes          Climax         Ending

What game are you looking forward to if any? :

         Watch Dogs 2         Pokémon         Halo Wars 2      Red Dead 2       Other ..................

What do you think makes a game stand out storyline wise? :

 Side missions       Details      Linking/ intertwining throughout    Simplicity    Complexity

Describe what you assume the protagonist and antagonist in a adventure game to be like/ displayed as?  Circle multiple answers :

   White          Black        Asian      Young       Big/ Fat         Muscular       Scruffy     Badass   

Ladies man         Gay         Heterosexual      Female    Male   Transgender       Smart  Dumb   
 

Describe your desired protagonist or what type of characters you would like to see in an adventure game : 

Give a few characteristics -   ..................................................

What setting do you find most intriguing within video games? (can you relate to any existing games) :

      Space           Desert        Urban       Rural       Futuristic        Prehistoric         Older times                                                                   Other 

In the video game industry, what do you think is used too much/ are bored of?

           FPS          TPS        Damsel in distress       Betrayal       Happy ever afters       Other

Finally... You know a zombie apocalypse is about to outbreak, what is your weapon of choice!? :

              ................................................................................................................

Thanks for your participation, It’s much appreciated :)

Production Log Updated Draft

My scene wasn't going as I would have liked and was very jumpy and laggy meaning that I had little control over my assets. Obviously for this animation task that's the most important part, even more important than the actual look of the assets and so this was going to hold me back drastically. However I have now instead of using Fields and solvers such as gravity and passive rigid bodies to make it a natural scene I have key framed each asset so that it looks like gravity and appears that they are floating.

I have also made it so that there is some 'turbulance' where my assets drop a little bit and then rise again and so it has the effect that for a split second there was gravity again. The one problem I had with this is that when moving through different frames it was extremely laggy. This meant that if i wanted to go to frame 600 which is the end of my timeline, it would take a literal hour to load up and so this wasn't practical.

What I did to counteract this problem is that I exported each asset using 'export selected' and then key framed them in their own scene. Due to the reduction in polygons it didn't lag as much and this allowed me to fully adjust my assets movements. I then re-imported the assets into my main scene but rather this imported the scene into it all this meant is that I could then save the scene as a new file making sure that my progress was being saved just in case it were to crash. The last thing that wasn't really a major problem but was at first is that once I had put down a key frame it wouldn't allow me to move or rotate my objects. To overcome this I had to open up a window called 'Graph Editor' and this comes up with a graph like the one in the picture and then move the asset by changing its x, y and z co-ordinates.

Market Research - Competitor Analysis

Little Big Planet 

Little Big Plannet is a game that is aimed at practically everyone but on screen it definitely looks to be more aimed at younger audiences. This is a more softer approach to an action adventure game although it bares a similar story line of killing enemies and overcoming large obstacles that are in the way with the sense of discovery. I knew it was this genre due to its gameplay of jumping and discovering new levels and progressing in skill. It has discovery and events that aren't likely to have normal occurrences and is followed by danger and action. The illustration to the right shows how the game is very free moving and open as you can see that there is another media text of TV show Spongebob being displayed. This shows how the game might be very relaxed as the appearance doesn't matter too much in terms of game play and it also distances the audience from it too as they might be forever changing. 

The game shows a very playful mood due to the colours on screen and also the simplicity such as the controls almost acting as help meaning it might not be challenging and rather the developers want you to just explore what it has to offer. The colour scheme creates quite a childish representation however.

 You can customise your Sackboy making him unique to everyone else and this can be done by different clothing collectibles and stickers that you find throughout the game. There is also a ‘pod’ which is your home screen which you can further customise.



The story line seems to be very random and experimental, the game purposefully has a fairly simple story line which can be depicted in some images as you can play it in any order, replay levels over and over and choose where and what you want to do via the world selection map. This can be seen in the image below and the image to the left as the game appears to be more focused on giving the player the tools to express their imagination.

One way I think this game could be event better is if there are ways to actually improve your sackboy, by maybe improving his speed or strenght to do things with more efficiency and quicker. One thing I will include in my game however is having this diversity within the game. You can create and do almost anything and so in my game I will incorporate the option of going at a problem in as many ways as possible and really letting the gamer choose the storyline.

Thief

This game however can appear far more focused and in depth on the off hand due to its attention to detail first off. The first person view initially fully immerses the gamer into the game and due to the details such as lighting in the scene being low and dim with lots of shadows creates a sinister vibe. FPV is very conventional within action adventure video games as it immerses the audiences into a virtual reality and are the focus point of the story that have elements of danger throughout and a quest style campaign.

This image once again is very dark lit and so you know that it is very serious and the game might involve a lot of stealth. It also shows that it involves combat due to the bow and arrow. The fact that you are also out numbered and they are kitted out with armour in comparison to you who seems to have very little as you are trying to hide.

This shows how there is something much greater in the game which leads to its exploitative nature. It also shows how it has a very complex story line as it an external force that is going to have to be understood. It also looks very harmful like an explosion and so violence is shown.

This illustration shows that the story line is twisted and quite horrific as you see people who have been hung suspended in the air. This also shows that the storyline won't shy away from death and with death and murder comes mysteries and complex natures. It creates grim representations of a older generation style with secret underground cults which is rather frighting and something that I think is specific to a more magic filled game and something I wouldn't use in my game.

This is a screen shot of the home screen during campaign . Here you can see that there are ways to progress and therefore adapt to the difficulty. The fact there are different routes to take inclines that it is going to be difficult and so making the right choices might be good or make it easier but inevitably its the players choice. This is one thing that I would incorporate within my game as it acts as a way of attaching the audience and make them want to progress. One thing I could say that is highly appreciated and could be added to this game is customisation within your actual character such as costuming and accessories.

Finally, this first person view fully involves the viewer even if you are not the gamer as the characters staring at you and you life is dependant on their brutal decision. It also shows that this games storyline might not be easy to glide through but rather the enemies are powerful as a result of the framing of this shot. This game shows representation of a male dominant world that is evil and cunning and at times shows females in a more sexual manor. Another thing that is really well done in this game is its merges between cutscenes and interactivity which keeps the audiences involved at all times and something I too would like to incorporate.

The Last of Us

 This game is a third person view game where you mainly play as the male protagonist but at times you do get to play as the girl. The third person view in in the first image distances the audience from the game as they feel like they are more of a bystander or simply a watcher however from this angle you are able to see a lot and take in the scene which has been done purposely as the whole environment creates lots of questions and evaluations. The violence, combat, free moving environment and discoverability

 of this game instantly shows the genre of action adventure.

The next image has the same TP view however all of a sudden the audience are suddenly thrown into it by a whip pan and suddenly part of a car crash. You are distanced from the characters but still get this shock and this shows me that the game play is going to be intense and jumpy and so expect the unexpected.

 This angle puts you in distress as you are in control of the character but feel claustrophobic due to being enclosed. It is also quite disorientating you are upside down and so the storyline might be quite difficult to comprehend also.

 The wide angle allows you to take everything into account and it also maximises the effect of explosions as they appear bigger. The start of the game starts off with typical representations of female damsel in distress with a heroic male protagonist however, this soon changes and we see the female child actually grow strong and show lots of courage and other traits tht are prehaps not conventional within video games and something that I would also like to replicate.

The use of the cut scene draws the audience in in third person shooters as the fluid movements and angles add to no only the seriousness of the situation but also this view of actually being part of the game and connected as you have previously been distanced and so you know the story line will get deep. This showed me that cut scenes are vital in building relationships as it makes for a more realistic experience and so one that I would like to also include

This final image shows that their is going to be a lot of exploring within it. The mise-en-scene of a back alley with already this exploitation of wanting to explore just to see what might be round that corner, can you get up that ladder, can you open that door are what every engrossed gamer wants to explore and the dark alley and boxes makes you wonder. This allows for a game to be more complex and in depth as hidden treasures and hints can be achieved.


This research is useful as it allows me to evaluate and seek trends that game developers use when creating a specific type of game. One example of this is by using third person views or even in some wide angle first person views with limited HUD it allows for a wide angle and this projects discovery and also anticipation at times of shock or wonder. Furthermore, it also allows me to see where in my script to have gameplay and cut scenes in order to create the best effects. I found that platform games are very hard to get fully immersed emotionally into simply due to their un-realistic nature meaning the audience have a harder time communicating with.

First Draft Project Log

Having seen my animation in a full rendered video I can now evaluate my scene fully. Some things I can see that I have done well and others need work on. For example, one thing that I think I have done successfully is actually getting the majority of my assets to float at different places and directions. This gives the illusion of a zero gravity scene which is what the brief was. I have managed to create a room type place where all of my assets are collectively together. Another thing I think I have done well is some of my textures such as my bottles that are labelled and designed to a fairly high standard. The texture I used on one of my bottles was one that I made on photoshop to go around legal and ethical issues and the other I changed slightly by adding a new name etc. Additionally they are well modelled as they have unique ridges and portray a actual bottle, the same can be said for my number blocks, I used UV texturing so that I could make each one unique and this can be seen in my animation as they collide with one another and spin but the same cannot be said for my cushions that were meant to be a minor detail but instead cannot even be recognised and are poorly done. This leads me on to my next www being that I have made some of my assets collide with one another to show how my scene reacts and create a realistic scene.

However, my scene clearly needs more work. First off my actual space ship cannot be seen despite their being a simple plain texture and scene lighting in there, this needs to be changed otherwise my assets just look like they are floating in a blank space. Additionally, some of my textures have either been bugged, lost or simply do not work such as my teddy bear head which I have textured multiple times just won't come through. This will bring my grade down as it doesn't look aesthetically correct or pleasing. Another thing that I can improve on is that some of my assets simply just float away with no other animation and so I am reliant on them colliding to see them rotate but I need to insert key frames at different times to get them to rotate on their own. Furthermore, my scene as a whole doesn't look that aesthetic and this is due to the last of textures and although this is not a big park of marking I still think I should do it as not only a finishing touch but more importantly make it look more like a scene by adding in different layers, wall details etc.

The next steps I am therefor going to be taking is firstly try and get it so that all my assets have been animated and actually work and if not export each one into a new scene where I will re-gig my scene possibly with a new space ship setting this will allow me to be get a fresh scene that I will hopefully be able to texture. From here I will be able to texture all of my assets if they need to be of a higher level. I will also research how to make some of them rotate as I cant fully remember and so I'm going to have to do some further research.